Gun club aims to arm gays for defense against bashers

October 27, 2003
Cleveland Plain Dealer

COLUMBUS -Muzzle flame rips through a gunsmoke fog as the shooters' arms rise and fall like exploding pendulums in a steady rhythm of fire. Brass casings, ejected from semiautomatic pistols, silently pinwheel through the air.

In this ear-protected world of the shooting range, the sounds are muffled, disembodied. A deep 9mm whump, a sharp .22-caliber snap, are felt more than heard, as hanging paper targets flutter in a breeze of bullets.

If those perforated papers were people - the sort who attack and sometimes kill homosexuals - they could be the four youths who threatened one regular range-shooter, a cop who was off duty at the time, in front of a gay club in Columbus. He pulled his gun, pointed it in the air and said, "You picked on the wrong fairy."

Standing among shooters at the range on this October night, J.T. Combs learns the fine art of firearms under the tutelage of his companion, Kirk Johns, a former Army armorer.

"Not only does he load the clips for me, but he cleans the guns after we shoot," Combs says. "Now, that's love."

Love is never having to say you missed.

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But this latest of monthly target-practice sessions at the Powder Room gun shop and range, just north of Columbus, is more than just a multi-caliber version of queer eye on the bull's-eye.

These shooters are members of the Ohio chapter of the Pink Pistols, a national group dedicated to arming the gay community for its own protection.

Click on the "Read More..." link below for more.

FBI statistics show that sexual orientation was the motivation behind nearly 1,400 of the 9,726 hate crimes reported to police nationwide in 2000.

A 2002 study by the National Coalition for Anti-Violence Programs said that the number of incidents (23) in Cleveland rose 44 percent over 2001, and 25 percent in Columbus (with 211 incidents), where there was "an alarming escalation in the brutality of assaults." Assaults involving serious injury rose 21 percent in Columbus last year, as opposed to the national average increase of 6 percent.

Watching that trend through a gunsight are the Pink Pistols.

The group was created three years ago by Douglas Krick of Boston as more of a social club for fellow shooting enthusiasts. Pink Pistols still includes the social and recreational aspects of shooting in its mission.

But as word of the group and membership spread nationally, Krick said Pink Pistols (www.pinkpistols.org) became more self-defense oriented - with the slogan, "Armed gays don't get bashed" - and now also works on behalf of Second Amendment (right to bear arms) issues.

Jonathan Rauch of the Independent Gay Forum coined the term "Pink Pistols" in a column he wrote in 2000 for Salon magazine, urging the gay community to arm and organize gun-training programs for self-protection. "Homosexuals have been too vulnerable for too long. . . . Playing the victim card has won us sympathy, but at the cost of respect. So let's make gay-bashing dangerous," he wrote.

Krick says he deliberately chose Rauch's designation for the group to deflate the limp-wristed stereotype associated with gays and the color. A few thousand members have formed 38 Pink Pistols chapters in 28 states.

Kim Rife, 37, of Union County, northwest of Columbus, heard of the Ohio group earlier this year through a friend who isn't gay. Rife said she has twice fended off attempted assaults outside gay clubs in Columbus, and noted, "I've seen how quickly things can escalate in gay bashings.

"To me, relying on the police - who are few and far between, unfortunately - in some regards is unrealistic."

So Rife and a handful of acquaintances starting meeting this summer at the Powder Room gun shop in Powell for monthly target practice. The Central Ohio Pink Pistols (e-mail: [email protected]) now has about 35 members, Rife said.

Gay members of the group share a common concern, said Rife, who grew up around guns as the daughter of a State Highway Patrol trooper.

"The perception of a threat is out there and it's real," Rife said. "Everybody I know pretty much knows somebody who's been bashed or threatened in some way."

Pink Pistols member Kirk Johns, 42, of Dayton, a longtime gun collector, said that although he was initially surprised when he heard about the group - "I thought I was the only gay shooter on the whole planet" - he liked the concept, both from a self-defense and recreational shooting standpoint.

Though Johns said his imposing size, at 6 feet 4 and 220 pounds, is probably one reason why he has never been victimized by gay-bashers, he knows others who have been assaulted.

Johns and other group members strongly support efforts to establish a law allowing Ohio residents to carry concealed weapons (as exists to varying degrees in 44 other states).

But even without the law, they believe Pink Pistols can be effective in training and familiarizing gays with guns, and serve as a potential deterrent to gay bashers.

As the Ohio chapter formed, Rife was been surprised by sources of support and opposition. "I've gotten a more negative response from gay leadership for being pro-gun than I have from pro-gunners for being gay," she said.

Yet in some respects, Pink Pistols isn't dealing with an all-gay issue.

Kimberly Potts, 38, of Columbus is an Ohio Pink Pistols member whose partner of 17 years recently died. "I'm not really interested in it [the group] because I'm gay, but because now I'm a woman alone." She said she got a handgun primarily for home defense.

"If anybody ever comes into my house, they're leaving toes up, in a bag," she said.

Several members of the Central Ohio Pink Pistols are not gay, including John, married with two young children, who prefers that his last name not be used out of fear of harassment directed at his family.

The Columbus resident, a longtime gun owner, said he joined the group because he has a second cousin who's gay, has worked with gays, and wanted to lend his expertise and support to gay gun owners.

"I believe in the fundamental right of all human beings to defend themselves against unlawful violence," he added, "and I prefer to use effective tools."

Tools as in pistols . . . pink or otherwise.

Click here to read the entire story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

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